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Sober Yoga Girl: The Book
In 2017, at age twenty-five, Alexandra McRobert found herself imagining jumping off the roof of her apartment building in Mahboula, Kuwait. She’d left her newly married husband the night before, for no reason other than a gut feeling that this marriage wasn’t the right path for her to take. Overwhelmed with guilt, heartbreak, and as her life was slowly falling apart, it felt like the only way out was to end her life.
Sober Yoga Girl traces the steps backwards to explore how she ended up there in the first place, and then traces the steps forward – to share how she worked her way up from the abyss. Ultimately, she discovers that the solution to her suffering and sadness is not what the western world has taught her. By going on an inward journey of yoga, sobriety, and healing, she discovers that the solution for her is not alcohol or western medicine. It’s about healing her trauma, finding spirituality, and discovering connection and community.
Sober Yoga Girl is a story for anyone who is searching for purpose and meaning – whether they’re on a sober journey or not.
If this audiobook is resonating with you, there are a few ways you can support this work and help it reach more people who it can help:
1) Free (and so powerful):
Leave a review on Apple Podcasts and share this with someone you love.
This is one of the most impactful ways to help this message spread.
2) Join the Substack community ($10/month):
Come deeper into this work with me on Substack, where I share weekly writing, reflections, and teachings on sobriety, yoga, and healing:
https://www.soberyogagirl.com/
3) Own or gift the book ($25):
Purchase a hard copy on Amazon - for yourself, or for a person in your life who might need this support:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1739094379
4) Practice with me in real life:
Join me for a retreat, training, or program and experience this work in a deeper, more embodied way:
https://www.soberyogagirl.com/p/upcoming-retreats-and-trainings-47b
Brene Brown said, “One day you will tell your story of how you overcame what you went through, and it will be someone else's survival guide." That is my hope for this book - that it reaches whoever it needs to reach, and supports you on your journey.
Your support in whichever way means so much!
Sober Yoga Girl: The Book
08. Chapter 4: The Universal Lesson
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
If this audiobook is resonating with you, there are a few ways you can support this work and help it reach more people who it can help:
1) Free (and so powerful):
Leave a review on Apple Podcasts and share this with someone you love.
This is one of the most impactful ways to help this message spread.
2) Join the Substack community ($10/month):
Come deeper into this work with me on Substack, where I share weekly writing, reflections, and teachings on sobriety, yoga, and healing:
https://www.soberyogagirl.com/
3) Own or gift the book ($25):
Purchase a hard copy on Amazon - for yourself, or for a person in your life who might need this support:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1739094379
4) Practice with me in real life:
Join me for a retreat, training, or program and experience this work in a deeper, more embodied way:
https://www.soberyogagirl.com/p/upcoming-retreats-and-trainings-47b
Brene Brown said, “One day you will tell your story of how you overcame what you went through, and it will be someone else's survival guide." That is my hope for this book - that it reaches whoever it needs to reach, and supports you on your journey.
Your support in whichever way means so much!
Chapter 4, The Universal Lesson. I read a post once on Gabby Bernstein's Instagram that said, You'll continue to attract the same person in different bodies until you show up for the universal lesson. When I originally wrote this book in 2020, I started a chapter with the following sentence: My childhood was not unlike any other childhood from the era, culture, and society in which I was raised. Up until very recently, I would have described myself as having a normal childhood. From my perception, I grew up in a middle-class home in a privileged part of Toronto with my mom, my dad, and my sister. My childhood was not what I would define as traumatic up until very recently. There was always food on the table, my physical needs were always met, and every problem was swept under the rug and not discussed. I was kept sheltered from the generational trauma that was part of both sides of my family. It took me almost 30 years to realize a few things. First of all, every single person has experienced trauma in their life. Trauma is part of life and it's unavoidable. When we are able to heal from our trauma, then we are okay. It is unhealed trauma that manifests issues in the mind, body, and soul. And second, just because what I perceived to be a major trauma did not happen to me as a child doesn't mean that my childhood wasn't traumatic. Unlike most of the stories in this book, with people from my past where names can be changed, altered, and made anonymous, my relatives will always be my relatives. One, the readers could understand where I came from and why I was the way I was. And two, expressing my truth about my family was essential for my own recovery journey. The chapter was 45 pages long. I sat with the story. Upon later reflection in 2023, I made a decision to once again remove this chapter from the book. When we practice the yamas of yoga, we practice both ahimsa, loving kindness, and satya, truth. Yes, my childhood story is my truth. However, ahimsa must always be applied to determine if a truth should be spoken. If someone may be needlessly harmed by the truth, then silence might be a more skillful choice. We have to consider what we say, how we say it, and the way in which it will affect others. In writing the story, I processed the trauma and I let it go. I made peace with it and I found closure. And so I decided when it came time to publish the book that my family story doesn't need to be a chapter in it. What I will say is whether consciously or not, parts of both my parents' childhoods were replicated in my childhood and had an impact on me. These inherited dynamics are a normal part of everyone's childhood experience. That being said, I have the deepest compassion for my parents and all the adults who raised me. They were all doing the best they could with what they were given. When I was on a Recovery 2.0 retreat in India in 2024, Tommy Rosen said something like, I had a tough childhood, but I wouldn't trade that for my mom's childhood or my dad's childhood because their childhoods were tougher. And just because my parents didn't heal all of the generational trauma that they inherited doesn't mean they didn't heal some of it. Nicole Pera, the holistic psychologist on Instagram, wrote, We're subconsciously attracted to partners who have the same traits as a parent we had a conflicted relationship with. This is the subconscious mind attempting to repair our original wound. To my relatives who I am disconnected from, I love you from a distance.